Prescriptions - Making Sense of the Health Care Debate
December 27, 2010, 11:38 am
This Week’s Health Industry News
By DUFF WILSON

With the Congress in adjournment and many business people taking off the time between holidays, we do not expect any substantive health industry news this week.

But we could be surprised.

Take, for instance, the news reported Sunday by our colleague Robert Pear in Washington.

The Obama administration, through an administrative rule, is resurrecting the notion of end-of-life planning services for older people — the same sort of planning that was falsely characterized as death panels in one of the hottest attacks on the health care overhaul.

Starting next week, the government can pay doctors through Medicare to advise people about voluntary advance care planning, according to the rule quietly issued by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service. The planning could take place during the annual physical checkup that Medicare offers under the new legislation. The planning may include advance directives on how aggressively to treat patients who can no longer make their own decisions.

That rule takes effect on Saturday.

The 112th Congress convenes four days later, on Jan. 5.

After that, we foresee a lot of health industry news coming from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the form of oversight hearings and spending measures.

There are no Food and Drug Administration advisory committees meeting this week. The F.D.A. has scheduled a decision on Wednesday for the fast-acting inhaled insulin drug Afrezza from MannKind. But many analysts expect a further delay.

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